Health Your Self: What’s Really Driving Your Care And How To Take Charge

Learn how to spot—and outsmart—behind-the-scenes influences at work every time your doctor writes a prescription, orders a test, or selects a treatment plan. 

Know what’s driving your doctor’s decisions—and how to protect yourself.

Sometimes your health care goes smoothly. Your physician listens, examines you, comes up with a thoughtful treatment plan, and off you go to resume your life. Then, there’s the rest of the time. You are pushed along from one specialist to the next, none bothering to talk to one another. You are overtreated with CT-scans, medications, even surgeries you don’t need. Then your prescriptions interact, leaving you even sicker.

Through compelling real-life stories, Health Your Self reveals the behind-the-scenes forces that compromise your medical care at every phase of life, from birth to old age.

• When a doctor refers you to a colleague in a hospital, there’s a hidden influence: he gets a bonus.
• When a psychiatrist prescribes medication to school children, it might have more to do with the colossal overreach of drug companies than something your kid actually needs.
• When you are handed unnecessary painkillers at urgent care, the doctor could be bucking for a five-star rating on a patient satisfaction survey. Enough of those and he gets a raise.
• When surgeons remove a harmless tumor, medical protocols are guiding their hands.
  

Health Your Self arms you with tools to uncover these hidden forces and practical steps to get the care you need. Health Your Self turns you into a healthy skeptic whenever you seek medical help. Question, discern, and evaluate your situation with Health Your Self’s invaluable insights and advice.